Page 153 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

Palazzo Reale di Ficuzza

Currently closed for restoration • 091 846 062
Ficuzza is completely dominated by the honey-coloured stone Palazzo Reale di

Ficuzza, set against a dramatic mountain backdrop. This stately royal palace, fronted
by a grassy piazza, was once the hunting lodge of Ferdinand III. Several sections of the
building, notably the hunting scenes in the Sala da Pranzo, survived destruction and
burning by Mussolini’s troops, but at the time of writing the guided group visits of the
interior had been suspended and there was no sense of when the palazzo might reopen;
call for an update.

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Corleone

From Ficuzza, another 20km on a quick country highway sees you in CORLEONE, a
fairly large inland town squeezed between a couple of fortified rocks and girded by
crags. It attracts a trickle of tourists, mostly on the scent of the Mafia since the town
lent Mario Puzo’s fictional Godfather, Don Corleone, his adopted family name.
However, it is also the real-life name of Sicily’s most notorious Mafia clan, and post-
war Corleone was certainly a desperate place of murder and inter-family blood-

letting. You wouldn’t, of course, know it from the quiet streets today, and if it wasn’t
for the notoriety there would be no compelling reason to stop in Corleone, pleasant
though the town centre is. A flurry of signs do their best to interest you in the various
churches and small local museums.

THE MAFIA TRAIL

Corleone might only be 60km from Palermo, and still in the same province, but the
dry hills, rolling farmland and isolated rural outposts are far removed from the
bustling capital. If you’re in no hurry, there’s a circular driving route back to
Palermo that shows you a wilder side of the island, with a few Mafia connections to
boot to add a certain frisson. It’s a quick 25km southeast over the hills on the SS118

to Prizzi – the name borrowed for that of a New York mob family in John Huston’s
1985 black comedy Prizzi’s Honor. On Easter Sunday here, giant statues of Christ
and the Virgin Mary are taunted by masked figures representing Death and the Devil,
to whom onlookers are forced to give money. Another 20km east along the SS189,

the main claim of Lercara Friddi is as the birthplace in 1897 of the Sicilian-
American gangster Lucky Luciano, whose family emigrated in 1907. While in prison
in the US, Luciano was enlisted by the Americans to aid their Sicilian campaign
(which was fully backed by the Mafia in its desire to end the Fascist rule) and his
reward when the war was over was to be freed, on the condition that he returned to